Performing bodies: Zhang Huan, Ma Liuming, and performance art in China - Interview

Qian: Are you saying that the spirit and the body are separated or depart from each other at those moments?

Zhang: I think so, but probably just for a short while. What I'm saying is that I try to experience the relationship between the physical body and the spiritual body in particularly designated circumstances. I want to make this experience clearer and deeper in some radical situations. Not just for the sake of testing the endurance of my physical body under external pressure, but rather through this process of endurance a deeper panic in the spirit might be released, though perhaps just temporarily.

Qian: Do you mean that, for you, the existence of the body and the spirit could be testified only when they are located in a specific environment?

Zhang: You might say so. I based the performance 3006 Cubic Meters: 65 kg at the Watari Museum in Tokyo in 1997 mainly on this assumption. The conflict between the body and the external environment is the way to prove the existence of the self. In the performance I tried hard to pull down the museum by a number of ropes that were fastened to many parts of the exterior wall of the museum. But the harder I tried to pull it down, the more I felt that my body was being pulled down by the museum. What I felt at that moment was how insignificant the body can be when it is inevitably conquered by something beyond itself. Resistance against any monstrous power would only result in a stronger consciousness of the powerless body. But the significance does not lie in the result but in the very act of resistance itself.

Qian: Are you trying to say that such an experience of the relationship between the body and the spirit could be intensified only when the body in its full nakedness comes in direct contact with the external world?

Zhang: Right. Nudity is absolutely necessary in my performance. Only in its full nakedness can the body be truly felt and its relationship with the spirit be identified through its direct contact with the object. In New York Fengshui [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 4 OMITTED], for example, only in nudity can I feel the relationship between ice and my body. The contact of such objects or animals as iron chains, ice, sparks, flies, and earthworms with my naked body makes me feel my body more strongly and helps me to develop a deeper understanding of the body. Moreover, it reinforces my personal perception of the surrounding environment.

Qian: Does nudity in your work have anything to do with sexuality, privacy, and morality?

Zhang: It's often the case in China that nudity is easily associated with those issues. But in my case, I do not think about such issues.

Qian: To Western audiences, your work may appear to have political meanings. Do you think such meanings are an aspect of your work?

Zhang: I cannot restrict audiences to certain interpretations, though I don't like to look at things simply from a political angle. Perhaps it is because the problems in China are so complicated that people want to find answers for themselves from different angles. In China, many people say that I am crazy, perverted, and a self-torturer. That's their point of view. For me, the question is how I can make good art.